African Film Festival 2014: The eight-film slate begins Saturday with the Brooklyn-set "Mother of George" - starring Jim Jarmusch regular Isaach De Bankolé and Danai Gurira ("The Walking Dead") as a couple having trouble conceiving a child until the woman's mother-in-law comes up with a creative solution - and ends Feb. 26 with "Nairobi Half Life," a high-energy look at street life in the Kenyan capital, which was Kenya's first-ever Oscar submission for best foreign language film. There's an animated film for the whole family ("Zarafa," Feb. 2), a short-film block (Feb. 12) and the Senegalese "Tey" (Feb. 5), a dreamlike fable about a man's last day on Earth, starring American musician and slam poet Saul Williams. At the Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley. (510) 642-1124. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.

SFFS Youth Filmmaker Showcase: One of the initiatives being fostered by new Roxie Theater director Isabel Fondevila is a series of partnerships with several youth education programs to start a Future Filmmakers Program. The initiative has its public launch at noon Saturday with 15 short films in a breezy 82 minutes, with filmmakers in person. These films came out of the San Francisco Film Society's Youth Education program. Included is an animated short made from LEGOs, a creative solution to a math problem and a changed life thanks to a magic pair of shoes. At the Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St., S.F. (415) 863-1087. www.roxie.com.

Frank Capra festival: This isn't your usual Capra retrospective. Somehow, the Stanford Theatre resisted showing "It's a Wonderful Life" again, but there are about two dozen other films screening over the next month, including short films from the "Why We Fight" World War II series and his 1950s Bell Telephone science films. Of course, there are more familiar classics: "Arsenic and Old Lace" shows Thursday night, and this weekend the Oscar-winner "It Happened One Night" is paired with the silent film "That Certain Thing." Through Feb. 23 at Stanford Theatre, 221 University Ave., Palo Alto. (650) 324-3700. www.stanfordtheatre.org.